Whenever I write a long post, I kind of scare even myself.
You never know what it's going to be this time: another vent about my life, a fic snippet, or an announcement that I'm leaving the fandom forever, only to come back a couple of days later with another long post saying I'm back.
I think I've mentioned this before, but my entire team is being laid off so we can be replaced by another one. Well, technically, the new people are already here. Our job now is to teach them everything we know before we leave. The problem is they don't even seem to be trying and... okay, that's not even what I wanted to talk about.
What I actually wanted to say is that I'm the last one to leave, which means that every few days I have to say goodbye to another coworker.
And every single time I end up crying.
I've worked with some of these people for so long (seven years, in some cases). They're all such wonderful, positive people, and they're incredibly organised. They're the kind of coworkers who solve problems quickly, support the whole team, and are always willing to help. It was genuinely an honour to be their team lead for the past four years.
For me, the team was always the best part of this job. That's why it's so unbearable to watch it all come to an end.
It also doesn't help that every time I send a farewell message, they reply with the kindest words. And all of our face-to-face work meetings somehow end up turning into conversations about old memories and saying nice things to each other🥹
I'm just really sad to realise that by autumn I might not only be unemployed, but I might also lose my friends too. And it's not like I have that many friends left to begin with.
I just remembered that I can make you go read my fic.
So here's another snippet from Chapter 5 of TLND
"Sirius," he exhaled, opening his eyes and restoring a mask of icy calm to his face. "What are you doing here?"
"Just driving past, decided your dusty boredom needed a proper shake-up," Sirius said, sweeping his finger around the room with the look of a lord inspecting his estate, before snapping his gaze back to Remus. He narrowed his eyes slyly, leaning his elbows on the counter and unceremoniously invading his friend’s personal space. "But hang on a second. You look... positively radiant. Your eyes are practically sparkling. What’s happened? Found your dad’s hidden stash of vintage whisky? Or have you got a date lined up with some passionate librarian who’s finally appreciated your dictionary collection?"
"Was that supposed to be a joke?"
Sirius snorted, his smile widening into that very smirk that had once driven half their school mad.
"Ah, no, my mistake. Still the same grumpy old codger. Must just be a temporary bout of madness from a sudden influx of fresh air in your crypt."
"We are the same age, Sirius. In fact, you’re a few months older."
"On paper, maybe, but in spirit..." Sirius drawled theatrically, pressing a hand to his chest. He swept a critical gaze over Remus from head to toe, lingering on the cardigan. "...yours seems to have permanently turned into a pressed flower, neatly dried between the pages of an encyclopaedia."
Well done on the PlotWeaver, sounds really exciting! Question - is it accessible on mobile as well or would you need to be on a laptop? Also, does that work online or can you work offline on it too?
Thank you! 🤍
The site has a mobile version, so you can use it from your phone as well. I mostly tested it on a computer, though, so if you run into any issues with the mobile version, please let me know.
If you'd like me to tell you more about PlotWeaver's features, or if you're curious about how I organized everything in Notion, just let me know!
Well, you did ask.
(Fair warning: this is going to be a long one. I'm splitting my answer into two parts: this post will be about PlotWeaver, and I'll cover Notion in the reblog)
So… welcome to the PlotWeaver user manual😅
Or, more accurately, "Welcome to a list of features I wanted". 😂
1) You can add Notes to a character or location directly from a chapter. Those notes will automatically appear in the character's or location's profile, and you can jump straight back to the exact chapter where the information came from.
(I just got tired of having to manually go back and update all the important details every single time. And if you don't do that—especially if you write with long breaks in between—sooner or later you'll forget how or where you described a character, a place, or some important detail.)
2) There are also Events—essentially the key moments that matter to your story. You can create them either directly from the text (using the button next to Note) or from the Calendar or Timeline.
Every event must have a date attached to it. The date can be as broad or as specific as you need—it can be just a year, a season, a month, or an exact day. You can also optionally link an event to a specific location, character, chapter, or story arc.
Once created, all your events will automatically appear in the calendar, selected character, location, and story arc pages.
There are also dedicated pages where you can view shared events between any two characters.
And finally, there are a couple of built-in consistency checks: the site can warn you if a character is scheduled to be in two different places at the same time, and it can also detect if a character is involved in events after they've already died.
(Sorry, Ted Tonks. You were a good man❤️)
3) There are also Ideas—basically a place to keep notes about things you want to add to your story later. You can link an idea to a specific chapter either right away or whenever you're ready. Once it's linked, it'll appear in the sidebar next to that chapter.
Later, you can turn an idea into a Scene—at which point you'll be able to mark it as "done" once you've worked it into the story—or you can convert it directly into an Event instead.
4) There's also beta reading.
You can share either your entire manuscript (by default, beta readers will only see completed chapters, but you can also allow access to works in progress) or just a specific chapter.
Beta readers only have access to the main text—all drafts are hidden. They can also view your character and location profiles, but they won't see your story arcs, events, notes, or any other planning material. All of that stays private.
While reading, beta readers can highlight text and leave comments, which you'll see in real time.
I think that covers most of the main features. (There are plenty of smaller ones I didn't even mention)
In any case, the site is completely free, so you can just sign up, create a project, and click around to see how it feels. And if it turns out not to be your thing, you can always delete your account and forget the site ever existed😄
(Before deleting your account, you can download the text of all your chapters or export your entire project, so you won't lose any of your work😉)
Thanks for the question!🤍
I'm going to post the second part about Notion now!🤍
(There’s also going to be a lot of text here, so I’ll hide it for the convenience of anyone who wants to skip this information)
First, I’ll share a link to the Notion manual — here. You can use it to learn how their main features work and how you can adapt them to your own needs.
In this post, I’ll talk about the structure I created for my own fics, as well as some fun little features I use specifically for writing.
So, usually I create a main page for my fic where I put the title, description, and some mood images (and then I never visit that page again, lol). For example, the GC page:
The folder structure itself is pretty simple. I have chapters, characters, plot, additional facts and useful notes. For chapters, I just create a file with the chapter title, and inside it I keep two files: one for the draft and one for the finished, fully translated version.
For BH, the structure is a little different. There, I keep the POVs (the main story from Tonks’ perspective and the related stories from Remus’ perspective), and inside those pages I have separate pages for each year, which then contain the chapters.
Probably the simplest structure out of all the ones that exist, lol. 😅
Here's where Notion gets really interesting.
For BH, I created a really useful database of all my characters.
It includes pretty much everything about them: their names, birth dates, age (calculated automatically), house, school year (also calculated automatically), clubs, roles (such as Quidditch positions or prefect status), and more.
You can also open each character's page to view or edit their profile individually.
So what's the cool part?
Since all of that information lives in one master database, I can automatically generate smaller, filtered databases that are incredibly useful.
For example, I created views grouped by school year, so I can instantly see which parents attended Hogwarts together and therefore which characters would already know each other.
I also made separate databases for each House's Quidditch team, so I can always keep track of who's still at school, who plays which position, and who I could potentially add to the team. (I really wish I'd set that up sooner. I only did it while writing Year 4😅)
Overall, there's a lot you can do with databases in Notion, and you can automate quite a few of them with filtered views and formulas. The only downside is that you can't automatically populate the information itself. (I have 97 characters in that database, and I entered every single one by hand)
As for planning, I can't really say that I love Notion's workflow for it. I tried keeping ideas in databases and also as plain text, but since there's no elegant way to tie everything into a calendar, I found it difficult to plan my plot that way. So I'm probably not the best person to ask about setting up Notion specifically for story planning😅
And once again, thanks for the question! 🤍
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask!🤍
If you'd like me to tell you more about PlotWeaver's features, or if you're curious about how I organized everything in Notion, just let me know!
Well, you did ask.
(Fair warning: this is going to be a long one. I'm splitting my answer into two parts: this post will be about PlotWeaver, and I'll cover Notion in the reblog)
So… welcome to the PlotWeaver user manual😅
Or, more accurately, "Welcome to a list of features I wanted". 😂
1) You can add Notes to a character or location directly from a chapter. Those notes will automatically appear in the character's or location's profile, and you can jump straight back to the exact chapter where the information came from.
(I just got tired of having to manually go back and update all the important details every single time. And if you don't do that—especially if you write with long breaks in between—sooner or later you'll forget how or where you described a character, a place, or some important detail.)
2) There are also Events—essentially the key moments that matter to your story. You can create them either directly from the text (using the button next to Note) or from the Calendar or Timeline.
Every event must have a date attached to it. The date can be as broad or as specific as you need—it can be just a year, a season, a month, or an exact day. You can also optionally link an event to a specific location, character, chapter, or story arc.
Once created, all your events will automatically appear in the calendar, selected character, location, and story arc pages.
There are also dedicated pages where you can view shared events between any two characters.
And finally, there are a couple of built-in consistency checks: the site can warn you if a character is scheduled to be in two different places at the same time, and it can also detect if a character is involved in events after they've already died.
(Sorry, Ted Tonks. You were a good man❤️)
3) There are also Ideas—basically a place to keep notes about things you want to add to your story later. You can link an idea to a specific chapter either right away or whenever you're ready. Once it's linked, it'll appear in the sidebar next to that chapter.
Later, you can turn an idea into a Scene—at which point you'll be able to mark it as "done" once you've worked it into the story—or you can convert it directly into an Event instead.
4) There's also beta reading.
You can share either your entire manuscript (by default, beta readers will only see completed chapters, but you can also allow access to works in progress) or just a specific chapter.
Beta readers only have access to the main text—all drafts are hidden. They can also view your character and location profiles, but they won't see your story arcs, events, notes, or any other planning material. All of that stays private.
While reading, beta readers can highlight text and leave comments, which you'll see in real time.
I think that covers most of the main features. (There are plenty of smaller ones I didn't even mention)
In any case, the site is completely free, so you can just sign up, create a project, and click around to see how it feels. And if it turns out not to be your thing, you can always delete your account and forget the site ever existed😄
(Before deleting your account, you can download the text of all your chapters or export your entire project, so you won't lose any of your work😉)
Thanks for the question!🤍
I'm going to post the second part about Notion now!🤍
How much in advance do you write before publishing the first chapter of a fic? I’m working on a multi chapter story and can’t decide whether I should have a rough draft ready for most chapters before even publishing or if I should just publish as I go? Guess readers might prefer consistency in updates.
Hi!
I’m usually terrible at waiting to publish updates😂 As soon as I have a chapter fully finished, it’s really hard for me to wait even an extra day before posting it, lol.
So I usually don’t have a backlog of completed chapters ready to go (which is probably pretty obvious from the fact that I haven’t been posting anything lately).
That being said, when it comes to the very first chapter, things are a little different. Before publishing chapter one, I usually have a clear plan for several chapters ahead. Sometimes I also have specific scenes written out that still need editing (usually dialogues that randomly appear in my head at the most inconvenient times).
But I don’t usually have fully finished drafts of future chapters waiting in my files.
You’re absolutely right that readers appreciate a consistent update schedule. Honestly, authors benefit from that consistency too, because having a buffer makes the whole process much less stressful. So if you have enough patience not to post everything immediately, I’d probably recommend keeping a few chapters in reserve. That way, you won’t have to panic if life gets busy and you don’t have time to finish a chapter before your usual posting day.
Good luck with your story, and thank you for the question! 🤍
What do you write in? Any specific software you use? How do you organise your long fic ideas? I started working on a long fic and struggle with the word doc I’m using. Thank you.
Hi!🤍
I used to write in Notion. Overall, I think it's pretty good for organizing chapters and keeping track of important information. You can create databases, add images, make timelines, and so on. The downside is that it can feel a bit overwhelming because it's such a general-purpose tool and it wasn't designed specifically for writers.
Right now, I'm moving GC over to a website my husband created. If you're interested, it's publicly available here: https://plotweaver.pp.ua. (That said, I should mention it's still in beta)
I could honestly talk about this site for ages because I wrote the technical specification for it, lol. But in short, it lets you create drafts, share either your entire fic or individual chapters with beta readers, and create events or notes for locations and characters directly from the text.
If you'd like me to tell you more about PlotWeaver's features, or if you're curious about how I organized everything in Notion, just let me know!
what inspired you when coming up with golden cage? it's such a brilliant, unique concept for remadora!
Thank you! 🤍
It all started with the idea of writing a dark!Tonks fic. At first, I focused on her backstory: the traumatic experiences she went through, how they shaped her personality, and how they changed the way she saw the world. But I kept running into one big problem—I couldn't figure out the actual plot. More specifically, I had no idea how to get her involved with the Order while still ending up with Remadora. None of the ideas I came up with felt good enough, so I eventually shelved the fic.
Then, sometime during the winter (I think it was winter, anyway), I kept getting edits featuring the princess x bodyguard trope. They showed up so often that they completely took over my brain, and eventually I started wondering if there was a way to make that dynamic work for Remadora.
The version of Tonks from my old dark!Tonks idea came to me almost naturally. I only had to tweak the backstory I'd already written.
Figuring out Remus's role didn't take long either. My very first idea was to make him the bodyguard throughout the whole arranged fiancé storyline.
The funny thing is that this was probably the first fic I ever planned almost entirely backwards.
Once I had a clear picture of both Tonks and Remus, I already knew exactly how the final chapter was going to end. From there, a lot of the plotlines naturally grew around that ending.
I think that final chapter is probably the main reason I still haven't given up on this fic and keep writing it. Because, in my very humble opinion... it's going to be REALLY good, lol.
Will Tonks and Lily start interacting soon in BH? Maybe when Remus is prefect in fifth year, Tonks gets a little jealous...? Lol
That was actually the plan!! Remus and Lily are going to start spending more time together, and Tonks is going to get jealous and end up disliking Lily😅
It’s hard to say when Lily and Tonks will become friends. I’d like to have Tonks become close with Marlene first. Alice, on the other hand, could definitely become friends with Lily first—they’re both Muggle-born prefects.
But we’ll see how it goes! Honestly, fifth year is going to be full of teenage drama😂
jk rowling posted a photo upskirting a trans woman and when asked why the fuck she would do that, she responded to say that the victim “chose to wear fishnets and a miniskirt”
but no, for sure! she’s a feminist! for sureee she’s all about protecting women and girls. this one just asked for it, right? it was how she was dressed.
in other jkr news, from august in the uk trans people will be legally required to use the bathroom that adheres to their sex. that 70k jkr donated to the supreme court case? yeah. they’re starting to enforce that. legally.
but yeahhh have you seen these clips from the show 🥺🥺 it’s so #nostalgic guyssss 🥺🥺 (throwing rocks at you)
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